old news and been debunked--they are just bottom feeding-- ;) RDY-B44 BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER / GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Follow the Money (Bayer Crop Did NOT Fund the CCD New York Times Artical) on: October 13, 2010, 11:03:32 AM more to digest-RDY-B Quote from: indypartridge on October 13, 2010, 04:02:17 AMHere's an article in Fortune that discusses the possible connection between Dr. Bromenshenk and Bayer:http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm[/color] The Fortune reporter knows full well:

(1) the onion seed pollination work was done for a large U.S. company, there was no grant received from Bayer,

(2) the acoustic recorder is better at pesticide detection than pathogens - the latter part of the development is an ongoing research project still being funded by USDA.

(3) we weren't asked by NYT to disclose our funding sources, it wasn't brought up, and there was no need since this information is required by PloS ONE before they will even review a paper. You can find it on the PloS ONE site.

(4) Bee Alert Technology, Inc. is a technology transfer company that is legally recognized as an independent company in the State of Montana, affiliated with the University of Montana. It is MT State Board of Regents Approved and has been since the early 2000s. Intellectual property agreements are in place, stipulating issues such as patents, IP rights, licensing, and if we ever make any money - which seems a LONG way off, the University receives an established royalty for research and education.

The Fortune article presents an assortment of lies and half-truths by a reporter who left another magazine before it folded. Unfortunately, this article has spawned a copy by New Yorker Magazine that added an even more inflammatory headline and chose to emphasize some of Ms Eban's more outrageous claims of what she alleges I said.

The only good thing about all this is that it can still generate a smile, courtesy of friends - such as the proposed title sent to me “Fortune’s Misfortune – Smearing Scientists Is Liable To Be Libel “.

If you have three hives in the same vicinity and introduce chemicals to two of the hives you have some version of a control with the one you did not introduce chemicals to. If you do the same thing but subject them all to a microwave and half of them die you have no control regardless of what the surviving numbers are in the other two hives.

...but in this case, "subjecting them to microwaves" (which here is "putting some bees in a cage and feeding them) prevents up to 60% drifting between hives, and prevents the variables added by putting them in different locations.

i'm not a big fan of caged studies, but they do have their use in small scale preliminary trials. in order to use free flying colonies effectively for such research, you need to separate the tests from the controls (again, up to 60% drifting of bees from colony to colony will affect most results), and you need to have enough numbers of locations to eliminate the effects of local conditions.

in order to use free flying colonies effectively for such research, you need to separate the tests from the controls (again, up to 60% drifting of bees from colony to colony will affect most results),

You are telling me that 60% of the bees from one colony will go into the hive of another colony? That is quite the opposite of what I was told in a bee yard where the hives were inches apart.

I am not saying you can't get some useful numbers from a gaged bee experiment but if 40% die in the control I am saying these numbers mean nothing. You can't leave that death rate unanswered.

the numbers dont reflect free flying colonies-the test and controls can be duplicated time after time -because we now how bees survive in cages and there longevity-this is just a small part of what is going on with the current findings--mostly this was to get the paper per-reviewed and accepted by science community--reason being you can not get funding for research with out publishing a per-reviewed paper -and yes it is hard to compare to practical beekeeping but the research is SOUND

a "caged" trial (not "guaged") are some number of worker bees taken from a colony and placed into a small enclosed cage where they cannot fly, and (in most cases) don't have a queen....there is no "exit" to such a cage, and the bees can do nothing but eat and die (they cannot reproduce). there is no brood present, and probably no comb of any kind (until the caged bees build some in the cage).

and yes it is hard to compare to practical beekeeping but the research is SOUND

It sounded as though it wasn't repeatable from the comments and discussions. It sounded like 40% death rate was unusual otherwise why would it be questioned. I worked for a medical company for 23 years. I can't imagine a 40% fallout on the control group. It points to a design of experiments blunder in my book. Maybe they are doing things different in the universities these days.

60% survivability with caged bees-is in reflection to a given time frame-the caged bee part of this is is how they do this for many reasons-try to get past that part -so you can get a grasp of what the study shows it requires a little knowledge about the types of pathogens and viruses related to bees -and it is not written for lamanbeekeepers but for science review heres the link----RDY-Bhttp://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013181

here they speak of the caged bees--RDY-B*As is common in cage bee trials, mortality was observed in the control groups in all four biological replicates. To confirm that the controls likely died from a non-infectious cause, deceased bees from all treatment groups were further screened with MSP. The controls did not have any detectable IIVs, but did show some evidence of Nosema, which was not apparent from PCR analysis of the same samples.*

Conclusions/SignificanceThese findings implicate co-infection by IIV and Nosema with honey bee colony decline, giving credence to older research pointing to IIV, interacting with Nosema and mites, as probable cause of bee losses in the USA, Europe, and Asia. We next need to characterize the IIV and Nosema that we detected and develop management practices to reduce honey bee losses.

This just looks like an excuse to bombard the hives with more chemicals. I won’t say that I understand all the gibberish that is contained within this publication but I surely don’t get any warm and fuzzy about their conclusions. Why have Nosema and mites become a problem in the first place? Answer that and I think you will find the root cause of many problems. Why is it that Australia doesn’t have CCD?

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The controls did not have any detectable IIVs, but did show some evidence of Nosema, which was not apparent from PCR analysis of the same samples.*

yes but it dose not boud well for the no treatment camp-you are correct in the root of many bee issues are varoarelated-and believe it or not nutrition is a key factor for nosema C(keep in mind there are two types) -years agothey called it DWINDLING disease -RDY-B